Cover Image: Manhattan Beach

Manhattan Beach

Pub Date:   |   Archive Date:

Member Reviews

An interesting if odd story... I liked the unique setting and FMC, and the diving sections were fascinating. But it just didn't pull me in as much as I would've hoped.

Was this review helpful?

I have a mixed history with Egan's books. I wasn't a fan of Goon Squad, but this one was terrific. Historical fiction about a woman who becomes a diver at a naval shipyard, I found the setting, the people, the historical context, all fascinating.

Was this review helpful?

I highlighted this book on my Booktube channel. The video can be accessed here: https://youtu.be/K37OlI8KPz4

Was this review helpful?

I enjoyed Visits from the Goon Squad, so I had high hopes for Manhattan Beach. Unfortunately, this lacked the magic her earlier book contained. The plot went in so many different directions, and it wasn't engaging enough to hold my attention. I enjoyed the atmosphere of it, but overall, I hoped for something more polished.

Was this review helpful?

I was eager to read a book that was written by the author of A Visit From the Goon Squad. This book was dry. I was not engaged. Some other readers have stated that the book was all over the place and I'd have to agree. I am definitely in the minority of my feeling of this book. I wanted to enjoy it, but sadly it just wasn't for me.

Was this review helpful?

Egan captures perfectly the era leading up to & including WW2. Anna, a highly intelligent 12 year old, when the novel begins, accompanies her adoring father on a visit to a wealthy employer . Father and daughter are close, but Anna has no understanding of her father’s entanglement with the mob & the long shoreman’s union. until years after his disappearance, when she will come into contact with his wealthy employer and fall in love. By this time Anna is working at a job previously held by men. She is diving and repairing the ships being readied for war. Anna’s home life revolves around caring for her brain damaged sister who she is also very close to and her loyalty to her sisters care is primary to
her character. Familial love, romance, betrayal, abandonment, grief, mystery, revelation, courage and the changing face of America all play a pivotal role in Evans mesmerizing historical novel. Highly recommend

Was this review helpful?

A good read. I didn't love it as much as I'd hoped - but that tends to be my experience with Egan's books. They always look fantastic, but slightly fail to deliver on my expectations. Nevertheless, it's a good read, a good story, and populated by engaging characters.

Was this review helpful?

I did not love this book as much as I wanted to, though I did find it on par with the Goon Squad. I did not cover it for Book Riot.

Was this review helpful?

I think the sign of a great writer is taking a subject you have very little interest in (in this case, naval dockyards) and bringing it to life. This was such a departure from A Visit from the Goon Squad and I was slightly nervous I wouldn't enjoy her historical fiction, but I was wrong. WW2 is a genre that has been written about so much but Jennifer Egan breathes new life into this subject. I will read anything she writes.

Was this review helpful?

This book was very disappointing to me. All over the place and not quite sure what the point was. I struggled to finish it.

Was this review helpful?

The review below ran on my blog on May 25, 2018, at https://www.thecuecard.com/books/manhattan-beach-and-ill-be-gone-in-the-dark/

From early on, I was able to get into the story that takes place in NYC in the 1930s and 40s … about a family — 11-year-old Anna and her disabled sister, Lydia, and her mother, and father, Eddie, who comes to work for nightclub owner and mobster Dexter Styles, whom he takes Anna to meet as a child. But then Eddie vanishes from their lives, leaving Anna and her mother to scrape by to make ends meet while taking care of Lydia.

Fast forward years later, and Anna, now 19, is working at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where eventually she becomes the first female diver repairing U.S. ships for the war effort — when she meets up with Dexter Styles again, which leads to an intriguing rendezvous as she tries to figure out what happened to her father.

The narratives of Anna, her father Eddie, and club owner Dexter Styles alternate throughout the novel and make for a fairly interesting ride into their intertwined and multi-faceted lives. There’s some rich historical detail amid the story and some enticing storytelling that conjure up quite well the underworld dealings, dock life, nightclubs, gender roles and attire of the era and feel of New York around the time of WWII. I especially found the part of Anna and Dexter taking disabled Lydia to the beach in his car — as well as the scene with Anna and Dexter making a dive with full gear on to the bottom of the bay quite vivid.

All in all many images from “Manhattan Beach” stayed with me and I liked its redemptive themes, many water scenes, and Anna’s perseverance. My only problem with the story was that it was quite drawn out and slow in places where I felt it didn’t need to be. I wanted to cut about 75 pages out of it — to speed it up a bit. I wasn’t a big fan of Eddie’s narrative parts but wished Dexter Styles had had a longer role or more narrative. I also felt when I got to the end it felt a bit anticlimactic to me — a lot does happen but perhaps it was just how it all came together. So while I liked it quite a bit, I did have a few caveats about it.

Was this review helpful?

When I had the chance to get a sneak peak of Jennifer Egan's latest, I jumped at it. Although I don't really remember the plot or details of "Goon Squad," I know I loved it... might warrant a re-read if I didn't have so many others in my queue currently.

For me this was the story of Jay Gatsby if he had actually gotten the girl, with a little Unbroken thrown in. As those were two books and themes I loved (WWII and roaring twenties-- although this Gatsby would have survived through the Depression) I was excited to jump in. I learned a lot about the Navy Yard and early-stage diving-- definitely a unique juxtaposition of this with the gangster aspect. However, the only character I really connected with at all was Dexter-- and even then I wasn't drawn in by the story between he and Eddie. I also didn't totally buy into Anna's feelings toward her father-- they seemed sketched for me, while her connection with Dexter somehow made more sense.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy.

Was this review helpful?

I really loved Jennifer Egan's previous books, but this one didn't work as well for me. Maybe after the goon squad, I just expected something different straightforward historical fiction. The characterization and plot development are good, though, and Egan is an awesome writer.

Was this review helpful?

Perhaps the most accessible of books by Egan, at least among those I've read. The book is worth it alone for its sheer volume of research, much of it conducted in the very place I read most of the book -- Building 92 at Brooklyn Navy Yard. It's one of those gems of a book I feel I can safely recommend to bookish snobs and casual readers alike.

Was this review helpful?

Should I have included e) None of the above? Possibly… Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach was dull.

Set in New York during WWII, the story follows Anna Kerrigan, who works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard. Anna becomes the first female diver, repairing war ships.

Egan’s writing is perfectly serviceable. I wasn’t cringing or skimming pages but nor was I entertained. There were no sentences that I re-read for the pure joy of them, nothing to surprise or delight. It was all rather ordinary…which is quite a feat given that as well as the highly dangerous scuba diving missions, there was a war going on, there were plenty of gangsters (doing deals and disposing of bodies), there were love affairs, and there was a missing father and a disabled sister. For a plot that was so ‘busy’, I’m stumped as to why I found it boring.

In terms of the answer to the poll, I was most interested in the bits about diving, and the fact that women were working during the war at jobs that once belonged to men. But while some of the procedural information was interesting, the emotion was absent (and you know I like good writing about water – see Winton or Parrett).

She watched, spellbound, as the helpers lifted a spherical metal helmet over the diver’s head, encasing him within it. There was something primarily familiar about the diving suit – as if from a dream or a myth.

2/5 Disappointing.

I received my copy of Manhattan Beach from the publisher, Scribner, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Was this review helpful?

A hard one for me to distill. The prose is championship worthy, particularly the dialogue, and the characters are alluring and charismatic. I enjoyed the majority of my time reading this book... however, I was personally not fond of certain elements, such as all the diving and the boating. I struggle to relate to stories set at sea and don't find experiencing it from afar very endearing, for reasons I can only chalk up to as personal quirks (not a good swimmer; I (unfairly) find boats upper class and bland; the vast endlessness of the ocean terrifies me).

More broadly, my bias against fiction set in the past affected my reading of this as well. I believe the era we exist in is tumultuously evolving at a rapid rate and therefore in need of our best artists to chronicle and help us understand. I say this, mind you, as a writer in the throes of finishing a screenplay set in the past, although firmly concerned with the present (at least I'd claim as much over bourbon that gets me too drunk, or cheap wine I find rather pleasant, or cheap beer I'd wished I hadn't ordered). But I wish Egan had written about the now or the later, not the literarily and cinematically omnipresent World War II era, despite being sympathetic to the fact that technology has rendered so many plots, including this one, unfeasible in the modern era.

As a loner and a lonely person, I take the message of the book, or the message that I stitched together from my interpretation of its words, that we can only exist if we are in conflict and cohort with other people, to heart.

One final note: in mentioning that I was reading this in conversation and on social media I've discovered that a substantive amount of people seem to have read A Visit From the Goon Squad. Since I know you might ask, no, this isn't that -- it isn't anywhere near as ambitious -- but it is charming all the same.

And so ends my 15-minute review of a novel that appears to have taken its author 10+ years to research and write. I venture the economics of fiction writing are increasingly a pock-marked boat filling with water.

Was this review helpful?

I read this book before it began to become popular, but I loved it all the same. I highly recommend adding it to your to be read list!

Was this review helpful?

I have been waiting to post about MANHATTAN BEACH by Jennifer Egan because it was chosen as the One Book Two Villages novel for our local public library district, but this seems a good time since tickets are going on sale today (June 1) for the upcoming Fall events with an author visit. In addition, there are several activities in the next few weeks that are related to the book's themes and that offer free registration: After Hours kick-off on Friday, June 8, Airborne on D-Day in the evening on June 13, and Women of World War II Saturday, June 16. A book group discussion (here is the publisher’s guide) is scheduled for early August – see the library website or call for more details.

MANHATTAN BEACH is a work of historical fiction and first introduces readers to 11 year old Anna and her father Eddie Kerrigan as they visit the mansion of Dexter Styles, a man with ties to illegal activities, in mid-1930s New York. Part of the motivation for Eddie to get involved in dubious dealings is the need to support Anna’s sister, Lydia, who has severe disabilities. The story moves on to wartime and the Brooklyn Naval Yard where Anna works and seeks to be the first woman diver involved with repairing ships. Egan skips back and forth in a somewhat disjointed manner with views from each of the main characters, adds suspense to the story, and explores themes involving family, role of women, resilience, identity and even the impact of technology, making this title (although lengthy at 430+ pages) a possible selection by more mature readers for Junior Theme.
`
MANHATTAN BEACH received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal and Publisher Weekly although, frankly, the comments are more mixed from readers on Goodreads and other review sites. Perhaps this is related to expectations and similarities/differences to Egan’s earlier work A Visit from the Goon Squad which won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Personally, I am eager to participate in the local programs and to share reactions about this title and the historical eras it covers.

Links in live post:
http://www.winnetkalibrary.org/manhattan-beach/
http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Manhattan-Beach/Jennifer-Egan/9781476716732/reading_group_guide

Was this review helpful?

Jennifer Egan is best known for A Visit from the Goon Squad, her Pulitzer prize winning kaleidoscopic tale of lives intersecting but not connecting.  Her follow-up novel suffers beneath the burden of a high degree of expectation in consequence - having produced that rarest of creatures, a novel that can be labelled as unique, what was she going to come up with next?  The arrival of Manhattan Beach was therefore something of a surprise; by contrast with the discordant and eclectic Goon Squad, this is an apparently traditional piece of historical fiction centred around an Irish family in 1930s Brooklyn.  The central character is Anna Kerrigan, who we first meet in 1934 as an eleven year-old girl accompanying her father Eddie to visit mobster Dexter Styles, but then the story fast-forwards to her aged nineteen as she trains to be a diver to help the war effort.  In the background another drama plays out as Eddie disappears in the intervening period and the older Anna tries to piece together what has become of him.  

On the surface, this story is apparently simplistic and almost linear but closer examination reveals far more is taking place.  The major focus of the novel is the sea; Anna and her father make their first appearance on a beach going to meet Dexter Styles, years later Anna is able to persuade Mr Styles to help her take her invalid sister Lydia to the beach, she trains as a diver in the sea and the sea is where Eddie may just have met his fate.  Indeed, Eddie observes 'how much of his own speech derived from the sea, from “keeled over” to “learning the ropes” to “catching the drift” to “freeloader” to “gripe” to “brace up” to “taken aback” to “leeway” to “low profile” to “the bitter end,” or the very last link on a chain'.  Over the course of the book, we witness a shipwreck, we walk on the beach, the water symbolising new beginnings, hope, death, rebirth.

As with Goon Squad, Egan continues her fascination with pauses and the unspoken.  Eddie is the bagman, visiting Mr Styles on the behalf of a union official who cannot be seen associating with a known mobster.  Anna does not understand what is going on but senses something beneath the surface.  Later we get to know Dexter Styles much better and witness his meetings with people whose words have very different meanings beneath the surface.  Severely mentally and physically handicapped, Lydia is unable to speak or move, with the question hanging heavy over whether Eddie's disappearance is because of his associates or because he was unable to cope with his younger daughter's presence.  Yet Lydia does speak once more, while visiting the beach with Anna and Mr Styles, her voice reawoken by the sea in a scene that sits like a non-sequitur but nonetheless has a feel of something magical.

Despite all of this, the novel lacks the resonance of Egan's previous book.  Although Manhattan Beach had compelling moments, the overall arc felt somewhat lacking.  The period of the Great Depression looms large in the American national imagination and it did not feel that Egan brought a particularly fresh outlook to the era.  Some of Egan's exposition sits rather heavily, particularly the passages describing the boatyard where Anna starts work as a diver - Egan has done her research and she seems keen that we notice this, unsurprising given that she's been working on the story since 2004 but it does hamper the flow of the story.  I wondered too if the story's long gestation was due to a lack of certainty in terms of direction - is it the story of a daughter looking for her father?  Or of a young woman making her way in a male-dominated field?  Or is it a mobster story?  All appeared to be possibilities but yet Egan never quite appears to make up her mind.

In some ways though, this feels nit-picky - Manhattan Beach did hold my attention until the end and I did find Anna an interesting character.  While it has become commonplace bordering on cliche to disrupt the timeline of a narrative to induce suspense, Egan manages this with an unusual amount of artistry, recreating a sense of the unknowns we face in our real lives.  She plays with the idea of how our own limited perspectives of the over-arching stories of our lives affects our perceptions of events.  With several very ambitious set-pieces, Manhattan Beach has a real cinematic quality and Egan has a clear love for the period.  This may not be destined to be the most memorable in Egan's body of work, but it is still well worth the reading.

Was this review helpful?

3.5 stars

Unfortunately I don't have much to say about this book because, although I was really into it during the reading process, this is one of those novels that you forget as soon as you turn the last page. It just wasn't remarkable enough.

I loved the setting and period of time the author decided to portray (surprisingly, since I am not an historical fiction fan) and I loved the writing style but everything else was just lacking of that something that makes you devour a book because you can't do anything else. I'll definitely keep Jennifer Egan in mind, though, because I'd love to read more from her.

Was this review helpful?